onto his knees, stretched flat out on his chest, head turned to one
side, face in the deep-pile carpet, gasping. His confused thoughts were
even muddier than the strange and clouded eyes that he could not bear to
look at in a mirror, but though he no longer possessed demonic energy,
he had the strength to mutter that special name again and again while he
lay on the floor, “Rachael… Rachael…
Rachael..
PART TWO DARKER Night has patterns that can be read less by the living
than by the dead.
-Te Book of Counted Sorrows Choppering in from Palm Springs, Anson Sharp
had arrived before dawn at Geneplan’ 5 bacteriologically secure
underground research laboratories near Riverside, where he had been
greeted by a contingent of six Defense Security Agency operatives, four
U.S. marshals, and eight of the marshals’ deputies, who had arrived
minutes before him. Under the pretense of a national defense emergency,
fully supported by valid court orders and search warrants, they
identified themselves to Geneplan’ 5 night security guards, entered the
premises, applied seals to all research files and computers, and
established an operations headquarters in the rather sumptuously
appointed offices belonging to Dr. Vincent Baresco, chief of the
research staff.
As dawn dispelled the night and as day took possession of the world
above the subterranean laboratories, Anson Sharp slumped in Baresco’ 5
enormous leather chair, sipped black coffee, and received reports, by
phone, from subordinates throughout southern California, to the effect
that Eric Leben’ 5 coconspirators in the Wildcard Project were all under
house arrest. In Orange County, Dr. Morgan Eugene Lewis, research
coordinator of Wildcard, was being detained with his wife at his home in
North Tustin. Dr. J. Felix Geffels was being held at his house right
there in Riverside. Dr. Vincent Baresco, head of all research for
Geneplan, had been found by D.S.A agents in Geneplan’s Newport Beach
headquarters, unconscious on the floor of Eric Leben’s office, amidst
indications of gunplay and a fierce struggle.
Rather than take Baresco to a public hospital and even partially
relinquish control of him, Sharp’s men transported the bald and burly
scientist to the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station at El Toro, where he was
seen by a Marine physician in the base infirmary. Having received two
hard blows to the throat that made it impossible for him to speak,
Baresco used a pen and notepad to tell D.S.A agents that he had been
assaulted by Ben Shadway, Rachael Leben’s lover, when he had caught them
in the act of looting Eric’s office safe. He was disgruntled when they
refused to believe that was the whole story, and he was downright
shocked to discover they knew about Wildcard and were aware of Eric
Leben’ 5 return from the dead. Using pen and notepad again, Baresco had
demanded to be transferred to a civilian hospital, demanded to know what
possible charges they could lodge, demanded to see his lawyer.
All three demands were, of course, ignored.
Rupert Knowls and Perry Seitz, the money men who had &upplied the large
amount of venture capital that had gotten Geneplan off the ground nearly
a decade ago, were at Knowis’ 5 sprawling ten-acre estate, Havenhurst,
in Palm Springs. Three Defense Security Agency operatives had arrived
at the estate with arrest warrants for Knowls and Seitz and with a
search warrant. They had found an illegally modified Uzi submachine
gun, doubtless the weapon with which two Palm Springs policemen had been
murdered only a couple of hours earlier.
Currently and indefinitely under detention at Havenhurst, neither Knowls
nor Seitz was raising objections.
They knew the score. They would receive an unattractive offer to convey
to the government all research, rights, and title to the Wildcard
enterprise, without a shred of compensation, and they would be required
to remain forever silent about that undertaking and about Eric Leben’s
resurrection, They would also be required to sign murder confessions
which could be used to keep them acquiescent the rest of their lives.
Although the offer had no legal basis or force, although the D.S.A was
violating every tenet of democracy and breaking innumerable laws, Knowls
and Seitz would accept the terms. They were worldly men, and they knew